1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a refrigerator, and more particularly to an illumination device for a refrigerator, which illuminates a storage chamber forming the interior of the refrigerator and includes a lamp adapted to be turned on or off depending on the opening or closing of the door of the refrigerator, and a method of controlling the same.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, refrigerators are appliances fabricated for the purpose of storing food at a low temperature, wherein such refrigerators are configured so that one or more storage chambers provided within the refrigerators can be cooled by a refrigeration cycle implemented by a plurality of electric components and circulating working fluid.
Such refrigerators tend to get larger in size, and to be multi-functionalized and diversified in construction due to the change of living environment. According to this tendency, various refrigerators, including kimchi refrigerators, are developed.
In addition, a technology of irradiating various colored lights to one or more products stored in the storage chamber have been developed and are applied, wherein light emitting diodes so called LEDs are frequently employed so as to irradiate various colored lights within storage spaces as described above.
Now, a lidded kimchi refrigerator will be described by way of an example for the purpose of convenience in description and understanding. However, it is natural that the present invention can be variously applied regardless of the type of a refrigerator.
A typical lidded kimchi refrigerator: includes a main body provided with a storage chamber which is upwardly opened so as to introduce one or more products to be stored, such as kimchi, into the storage chamber; a door rotatably connected at a side of the opening of the main body so as to selectively shield the storage chamber; and a lamp assembly mounted on the bottom surface of the door for irradiating light to the interior of the storage chamber.
However, the kimchi refrigerator configured as described above has the following problems.
Because the lamp assembly is mounted on the bottom surface of the door, there is a problem in that moisture or water may be directly penetrated into the lamp assembly due to user's carelessness when food is introduced into the storage chamber. Like this, if moisture or water is penetrated into the lamp assembly, there is a problem in that one or more lamps and/or power devices provided within the lamp assembly come into contact with the moisture or water, thereby causing the lamp assembly to be fractured, which may injure the user.
Occasionally, the lamp assembly may continuously illuminate the storage chamber or entirely illuminate the entire storage chamber regardless of the used area of the storage chamber. As a result, there is a problem in that power is unnecessarily consumed due to the lamp assembly.